How to Stay Married After an Affair
When an affair happens in a marriage, it will often cause a rippling and devastating affect on the marriage and on the relationships around the marriage. From children, to extended families, friends and colleagues – all can be dragged into dealing with the painful aftermath of an affair.
Often there are feelings of betrayal, anger, loss and even self blame can play a part – and those feelings are not all exclusive to the spouse who has been cheated on!
With that said, it is possible to rescue your marriage after you or your spouse has had an affair. Many do! Some obviously more successfully than others, but for those who do manage to pull off rescuing their marriages, how do they do it?
Well they basically sit down together and talk! It’s that simple.
Let me clarify – there’s nothing ‘simple’ about the act of rescuing a marriage, but there are some basic and ‘simple’ steps you can take to give yourself the best shot at saving your marriage.
Steps to Staying Married After an Affair
- The cheating spouse MUST end the affair and break all contact with their lover! You cannot make a fresh start if the affair is still going on.
- Get ready to talk about the affair and how/why it happened. Whether it was you or your spouse who had the affair, you have to talk about it! There’s very little point in not exploring what caused the affair in the first place. It’s very easy to blame the spouse who cheated, but a set of circumstances came together to make an affair seem like a good option for the cheating spouse and if you don’t find out what those circumstances were, how are you going to ever guard against them in the future?
- The talking will take many hours, days perhaps even weeks or months. So don’t attempt to have one sit down meeting to discuss EVERYTHING! It won’t work and you’ll likely cause more problems for yourself than good. So put a time limit on how long you talk and never start a conversation when either of you are tired.
- Make sure that if you do decide to save your marriage, that the two of you have decided to do so TOGETHER. If you need time to think about what you need, what you want to do, then take the time. There is no point in one spouse believing there’s hope in saving the marriage and the other has decided it’s over.
- Is sex a problem in your marriage? It’s true the affair doesn’t necessarily have to be about wanting more sex or wanting to feel needed or desired, but it might well be! So if you and your spouse are having sexual problems, then those problems need to be addressed.
- You both have to make a commitment to spend more time together and grow together rather than apart.
- Forgive! Whether the affair was yours or your spouse’s, you have to forgive them or forgive yourself. You cannot make a fresh start to your marriage if you have not found a way to forgive. Of course this won’t happen over night, so give yourself time to get there.
- Think long and hard about getting some solid relationship advice to help you and your spouse stay married and stay happily married – here’s the best online guide I know for that Save My Marriage Today!
It’s true that an affair at the heart of your marriage is not going to be an easy thing to get beyond and recover from. The trust that has possibly taken years to build up has been shot down in one swoop, building it back up will require commitment from both the cheater and the cheated upon.
Mark Sanford Admits to Being a Cheating Spouse
